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THE PHANTOM LAND. PART II. 



BUT soon my guide to other objects round 

 Directed my attention. By the glare 

 I saw the unremembered and renowned 

 Suffering the fate the bad are doomed to bear. 

 I stood among the noble and the crowned, 

 The proud, the poor, the paltry, the profound 

 My guide the while explaining who they were. 



I saw with wonder, and with chastened grief, 



Sights to offend the proud and pain the brave : 



I saw Sesostris, the Egyptian chief, 



Blind and still bleeding, impotently rave ; 



I saw him chained O change beyond belief 



Chained to a vulgar murderer and thief! 



And Xerxes taunted by his meanest slave ! 



Nero I also saw, with haggard look, 



And brow that with resentment seemed to lower, 



Denouncing fiercely, while his fist he shook, 



The uncurbed sway of arbitrary power. 



While Caesar from his glittering scabbard took 



The sword with which he crossed the sacred brook, 



And cursed its edge and cursed his natal hour. 



I saw the sceptic Phyrro stand aloof, 



With knitted brows, like one whom terror stings, 



Blaming the fearful cogency of proof, 



And mourning o'er the certainty of things. 



Loudly he talked of earth's star-pointed roof, 



Of life, and death, and man's unravelled woof, 



And Nature's heaven-born impulses and springs. 



Low fall'n, like an unsphered and rayless star, 

 Philip's great son I saw. Whate'er was proud 

 In his full eye, which lighten'd so in war, 

 Was quenched, or ruled by sorrow's settled cloud ; 

 His hand hung down, the hand that once gave law, 

 It grasped the sword that held the world in awe ; 

 Thus to himself I heard him talk aloud. 



" O for a draught of water to allay 



The ever-burning thirst that wastes my frame 1 



One draught no more one cooling draught to stay 



The raging of my bosom's feverish flame. 



Can I indeed be Alexander ! Nay ! 



And yet I must be ! It is hard to say 



No ! nothing now is left me but my name. 



